Staying Power

 

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”—Luke 24:27-32

In recent years, studies have shown that for many hard-working families and individuals, Sunday afternoons can be the biggest letdown of the week: Not quite ready to relinquish the weekend, and yet feeling there’s not enough time to enjoy anything of substance because of the nagging mental list of dealing with traffic on the way back from just about anywhere, or the kids’ homework still to be done, or paying bills or doing laundry or any other obligatory task that had been set aside for weekend relaxation.

For entirely different reasons, Christ-ones who regularly go to a building to be Church with other people on Sundays can also relate to that afternoon letdown that sometimes creeps in. You had your heart strangely warmed within by someone’s story of a powerful thing that God has done for them (could He for me, too?), or from a passing word of encouragement, or from a line in a worship song or hymn, or from a scripture verse that seemed to leap off the page so demonstratively that you felt like you were the only person in the room.

And afterwards, a shared meal, another cup of coffee, and another conversation. Or, even a pause in the action to step back and savor the scene of like-minded believers who probably wouldn’t normally hang out with one another mingling, laughing, praying…

…and then, just like that, it ends. Everyone goes their own way and heads for their cars or trucks or motorcycles, and you get in your car to head home—which sounds really appealing, until you turn into your driveway and walk through the door and, as great as it is to be home, you notice that your heart strangely burns once more for what and who and Who is missed, and what is perfect in life's imperfectness.

The enemy can be quick to turn that healthy, eternal longing into several hours of life with Eeyore, where like the people in the Sunday afternoon blahs studies, everything is painted with a gloomy cloud that follows you everywhere.  It's good to know, however, that there is something fantastic to be learned from the Emmaus Road guys. As they turned into their own “driveway,” instead of sighing, they uttered one simple three-word prayer: “Stay with us!”

The Psalmist puts it another way:

“Within Your temple [in Your presence], O God, we meditate on your unfailing love.”—Psalm 48:9

In this case, meditate means to linger. It’s a conscious reminder to not be quick to get back into the routine of life and leave the taste of Eternity behind, but to carry it with us into your Sunday afternoon and every other morning/afternoon routine, and let it linger a bit—even something as simple as hitting replay on the song through which God is speaking to you at that moment instead of just going on to “next.”

It’s good, and normal, to have a burning heart that is not easily satisfied with life as usual, on Sunday afternoons or any other time of the week, because the foretaste of the promise that is yet to come is in every King's kid's DNA.

What’s even better is to know that whenever we pray “stay with us!," the invitation will never be refused.

“Lord we pray, for the afternoon, that it may not be wasted, but that it might be used in some good positive way: to know thee better; to cultivate spiritual things; to do good unto all men; to witness your saving grace to a world that’s dying. And now may grace and mercy and peace from God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost be with us.” — AW Tozer

Full Time All the Time

"And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." — Colossians 3:17

Yes but, "What do You want me to do exactly, Lord?"

It doesn't matter if you're 18 or 80, that purpose-in-life question is always there, lurking. But while waiting for a voice from Above (that may or may not come), it's easy to brush off the menial tasks of everyday life as something to get through until that really important assignment comes along.

And maybe it already has.

Because God has much more to say about our purpose in life than we realize. Big picture things like putting down roots in the good soil of Father/child relationship and bearing fruit that will last. Totally mind-boggling things like cultivating counter-cultural heart and mind attitudes so that we become imitators of the One who created us as we go about our days. Bravehearted things like being chosen to declare freedom and light and joy in places of fear, confusion, and hopelessness.

While it's good to know that God is into big dreams and visions and high aspirations, and into our desire to pursue them, it's also good to remember that "this is the day that the Lord has made," and to not "despise the day of small things," and especially that "whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might..." In even the smallest, seemingly insignificant, routine daily stuff of going to the recycling center, sitting through a meeting, or multitasking on top of multitasking, God is always ready to stir up some big picture, mind-boggling, bravehearted things that are high on His life-purpose priority list:

• Like having the right attitude when it's easier to join the crowd and complain.

• Or, being quick to listen and slow to speak when someone out of the blue says, "Hey, have you got a second?"

• Or simply, just learning (slowly) the sometimes difficult calling of being a faithful servant even to those to whom you'd rather serve up something else.

When Jesus told His disciples to "wake up and look around! The fields are already ripe for harvest" (John 4:35), He wasn't just talking to those in or looking for a full time ministry. It's a call for all of us each time we ask that purpose-of-life question to stop waiting around until tomorrow for something big or better to happen, and to instead remember to seek to live full-on and full time in the now, even to joyfully look for His purpose in every single seemingly ho-hum day.

"No man ever served God by doing things tomorrow. If we honor Christ and are blessed, it is by the things which we do today. Whatever you do for Christ, throw your whole soul into it. Do not give Christ a little slurred labor, done as a matter of course now and then. But then when you do serve Him, do it with heart,soul, and strength."(Charles Spurgeon)

A No-brainer Revisited

"And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to Him and begged Him to come and heal his son, who was close to death...." (John 4:46-53)

We aren't told much about this royal leader. Perhaps he is nameless for a reason--that a strong, believing faith isn't just for super-spiritual people but for any and all of us who will, with each passing day, grow to take Jesus at His word, against all "what-ifs?" that might be swimming around in our head, and merely take one step forward:

"The man took Jesus at His word and departed. While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living."

This guy's story is a reminder that a believing faith also doesn't have to see immediate results for it to be believing faith. Neither is it a destination to shoot for or an easy button to push, but instead a lifelong adventure filled with peaks of miraculous answers and valleys of waiting, waiting, waiting--but along the way, always lots of ropes of Hope on which to grab.

And joy. Deep, satisfying, contented joy that, with each step of faith forward, surpasses all understanding, common sense, outer circumstances and worldly turmoil. Because a believing faith is simply and always in the person of who Christ is for every season of life. 

Some of the biggest no-brainers of this journey are the ones we need to revisit every six hours or so. Believing faith is one of them, and it always starts (or starts over) with putting one foot in front of the other...especially when there seems to be no answer in sight.

Tasting and Seeing for Ourselves

"Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ."--Ephesians 4:15


Of the many risks facing a Christ-one in our day, the greatest may be being deceived to believe something that sounds right but is really way off. Take this familiar passage, for example. How often have we heard well-meaning believers say "speak the truth in love" to imply "I'm gonna tell it like it is, baby, whether you like or not."

Not only "sounds right but is really way off," but not even close.

Eugene Peterson, writer of The Message, has a great heads up for all of us before we start lifting phrases out of a story just to make our point (frankly, because we can't help ourselves):

“No text can be understood out of its entire context. The most entire context is Jesus. Every biblical text must be read in the living presence of Jesus. Every word of the scriptural text is a window or door leading us out of the tarpaper shacks of self into this great outdoors of God's revelation.” 

And when we step back and see that the context of this so-called "tell it like it is" passage is, indeed, Jesus, and the Church He built, it changes everything. In fact, Ephesians 4 reminds us He has put fellow believers in our lives with various gifts to build us up, to rub off the rough edges, to help us keep going even when we stumble, to encourage us to drink in and live the Gospel, to continually taste and see for ourselves that the Lord is good, to equip us to know the voice of the Shepherd so well that we can more easily discern and refute those "sounds right but is really way off" voices that will try to set us, our loved ones, and friends adrift--or worse.

Not only that, it's good to know that when we do truly "speak the truth in love" in the face of daily (and often very enticing) deceptions, both subtle and blunt, we also speak volumes about the Jesus context through our attitudes, our affections, and our actions. So, Lord, this day, thank You for the people You've put in our lives over the years to help us taste and see the Truth of You for ourselves, and then help us to erase all false definitions of this passage and instead...

"Let our lives lovingly express truth in all things--speaking truly, dealing truly, loving truly. Enfolded in Love, let us grow up into Him in every way and in all things into Him who is the head--even Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One."--Ephesians 4:15, Amplified

Chuck It

"Cast your burden on the Lord — releasing the weight of it — and He will sustain you; He will never allow the consistently righteous to be moved — made to slip, fall, or fail." — Psalm 55:22 Amplified

Several Bible translations urge us to "give" our burdens to the Lord. And that's good. But "cast" is a better word, because this is what comes to mind:

We fling it out there in the deep unknown, trusting that because He's grabbed it many times before, He'll do it at least one more time. Over and over, He proves Himself faithful and good, whether we barely have the strength to fling it or are stirred with a holy resolve and jet-fueled perseverance to cast it with triumphant faith.

The problem with this image, of course, is that the one casting always seems to be taking it back. Over and over again.

Yep, far too often, we're that guy. Or, in the words of Mrs. Cowman's Streams in the Desert:

"Genuine faith puts its letter in the mailbox and lets go. Distrust, however, holds on to a corner of the envelope and then wonders why the answer never arrives."

 

An even better image of "cast," then, might be this one:

Because the psalmist's definition of "cast" thinks outside the box. It implies not just give or hand over the burden, or even cast it in a reel-it-back-in fishing sort of way, but to chuck it entirely onto Him.

O God, You know how much we like the feel of that fishing rod with its grip and control, but if this is what Your Word says, help us to become this guy instead. Thank You that we never wear You out with our desperate pleas and sighs. And for that next weight du jour, help us to hold on for dear life only to the proof of Your faithfulness and goodness and Love to us over and over again, and then to chuck the weight of what's weighing us down all onto You — resting in the fact that, in spite of ourselves, Father knows best. Far less corner-of-the-envelope living...more no-strings-attached trust.

"This is God in His holy place
This is God clothed in love and strength...
Sing out, lift your voice and cry out
Awesome is our strong God, mighty is our God!" 

("Strong God"-Jon Egan, Jason Ingram, Meredith Andrews)

When Those Guys is Us Guys

“No one calls on Your Name or strives to lay hold of You.”—Isaiah 64:7

Biblical zingers like this aren't always directed at the unrepentant, rebels, Pharisees and Sadducees, and people-who-smoke-and-chew. In fact, just about every time we're thinking, "yeah,those guys," God is prone to reply, “Hmmm. Anything hit close to home?”

Unrepentant, maybe not, but OK yes, we sure do like hanging out with its cousin Stubborn. And we can hardly help ourselves. It’s an attraction that’s been engrained deep within from birth (thank you, Eden), with roots deeper still simply by being an American, and double-knotted if you are a New Englander. A nicer word for it, or so we'd like to think, is “self-sufficiency”—which certainly has its merits for many things in life.

But not in the Kingdom of God, where roots of “one another,” and "My grace is sufficient for you," and “trust in the Lord” are deeper still and endless. And beautiful and rich.

And yet how often do we claim to walk with the One who does “awesome things that we did not expect” (verse 3), over and over again—and yet more often than we’d like to admit, we don’t lay hold of all that?  Or of Him? At least not right away. Because when things aren't working out the way we'd like, and "nothing is happening!," and God seems to be nowhere in sight, it's surprising how often all of that will be rooted in trying to be self-sufficient in serving, in attitude, and in pursuing the seemingly noble things of fixing stuff, and people, and patterns, and bad habits. On our own.

Condemnation? Nope. Much-needed course correction? Yup. Us guys. And every five minutes, actually.

Lord, thank You that Your Words aren't merely wonderful words of life, but that they also lovingly and surgically pierce the heart for our good. And that for every passage that seems to be directed at ‘those guys,’ healing, strength, wisdom, and perseverance awaits any one of Your kids who would swallow hard and confront the course correction that might be staring us right in the face—the one whose anthem is...

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the One I love. Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it—

seal it for Thy courts above…

...so that we would increasingly live and strive to lay hold of You (in spite of ourselves) at the dawn of each new day.

Even So, 'But Go!'...

“He is risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee.’ There you will see Him, just as He told you.”—Mark 16:6-7

This morning, and the 51 other Resurrection Days to come, we who consider ourselves Christ-ones are reawakened to the mind-boggling reality of the greatest victory…ever. There has never been a more joyous triumph—because unlike even the most amazing and exhilarating sporting events or personal accomplishments, the eternal joy of the reality of the Resurrection never fades or becomes diminished with time or fleeting memory. Death and hopelessness met Love, and were destroyed once and for all. And what could possibly be better news than that?

The “He is risen!” of the angel shouts that not only was the cross not the end of the story, but that the One who is very much alive is God Himself who was, and is, and is to come. Just as He said it would be, over and over and over again. He is still the One who became flesh and “moved into the neighborhood.” He is still God with us, and yet so much more—now Christ in us, the hope of His glory before a world in need of more hope than ever.

Eternal reality is one thing. Living it out is another. And on those days (sometimes weeks) when the cares and stresses of life are compounded by an accelerating unraveling in every corner of the world, it’s good to remember that God has great patience, encouragement, and a relentless Resurrection-living call on our lives, no matter how imperfect and weak our faith may be at times.

In fact, according to the Gospel of Mark, here’s the kind of week the very first ones who followed Christ in person had during His last days physically on earth:

 

They fell asleep when they should have been alert

They deserted Him when they said they wouldn’t

They ran home where it was safer

They followed at a distance hoping no one would notice

They caved in to public opinion

And even on this day at the empty tomb, they doubted, were filled with confusion

And ran some more

And some 2000+ years later, we have all, at one time or another, sung together: “Owned the t-shirt factory!”

All the more reason why Resurrection morning is a reminder to “but go….” and join the weak-of-faith who’ve gone before us at Galilee, to worship with renewed awe, wonder, and joy even if hounded by the tiniest of doubts and fears, and to be reminded of our purpose in this lifetime—and especially that the strength for the journey is His anyway:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations….and surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)

"The point of your life is to point to Him.

Whatever you are doing, God wants to be glorified, because this whole thing is His."—Francis Chan